5 Excellent WordPress Backup Solutions

Imagine the unthinkable – you pull up one of your many websites and what the – it’s gone! What if you installed the latest update and a faulty theme or plugin stuck a spanner in the works? Maybe a laughing skull shows someone hacked you and slipped you some ransomware. Send money or lose everything – yikes! What if your client was dabbling with unprotected things and broke the site?

Without a WordPress Backup Solution to save your site, all ‘what ifs’ become plausible. Because at some point it’s happened to someone, somewhere. Your hosting service might provide regular backups. But is it enough? Back up before it is too late. Luckily, you’ll find plenty of functional and intuitive plugins created to make the process simple. Here are five of the best for you to consider.

1. BackupBuddy

iThemes offers this extensively featured WordPress Backup Plugin as a comprehensive solution for clients with lots of websites.

Pros

You can move sites (and staging sites with some of the developer plans) between domains, hosts, or servers using the migration feature.

A tool called ImportBuddy makes restoring your site from the backup easier.

Additional tools include malware, database, and server scanners.

You can back WordPress up to a compressed folder or to cloud facilities like Amazon, Dropbox, Google Drive.

WordPress backups, restorations or site migrations are achieved in just a few steps.

What gets backed up is up to you. It could be just the database or the whole WordPress installation.

You can decide on how frequently backups occur, anytime from every hour to once a month.

Cons

iThemes’s backup storage, Stash Live, is free. But for most of their plans, you’ll need to pay for it after year one.

It can be expensive to cover all your clients’ sites.

2. BackWPup

This WordPress backup plugin comes in two flavors, free and premium. So you have nothing to lose. Try the free one first, you may find that it does everything you need. It only differs from the premium version in the number of sites it coveres and the type of support and updates you can get.

Pros

Has database optimization, repair and scanning features

It backs up your whole WordPress installation and can push them to your third-party storage service, directory, or FTP.

Quick response to customer complaints and priority support for premium service customers along with automated updates.

Can handle a number of sites

Cons

Bugs are evident here and there.

High price for the premium version considering what it does.

3. BackUpWordPress

If you don’t need restoration or migration assistance, then BackUpWordPress may be ideal for you. Simple, but powerful. And if you’re not sure, you can try the limited free version and then upgrade to premium later on if it’s a good fit.

Pros

A year of priority support offered with premium plans.

You can customize backup frequency schedules to your requirements.

Different premium offerings mean you only pay for what you use. So if you’re a developer with just a few sites then that’s all you’ll pay for.

Free and premium editions available. Ideal for ‘try before you buy.’

Premium gives you plenty of choice about where you save your backup. File storage service, zip or even your own server.

Troubleshooting yourself is easier thanks to a comprehensive knowledge base on the BackUpWordPress site.

Cons

Customers say that the free plugin can be slow or buggy when backing up. Devs state that this can happen when customers back up at times when server resources are low. So just be mindful.

Restoration or migration services are not available.

4. UpdraftPlus

Like other WordPress backup and restore plugins here, this one’s available in both paid and unpaid versions. The free one does a great job, so much so that it’s highly rated by users. But the premium version’s worth going to straight away for its advanced features:

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You can extend for multisite-compatibility using the UpdraftCentral plugin.

Developers can choose how the plugin handles clients’ sites, configuring backups to run without their awareness or intervention.

The free plugin gives users the basics: backup and restore. The premium version is relatively cheap, and with that you can do migrations too.

Send your backups to yourself via email or to the usual third-party services.

The excellent migration tool automatically backs up your site prior to any core, plugin or theme updates.
And you can use it to retrieve backed-up versions of your site if you were using another WordPress Backup Plugin with no restore capabilities.

Con

Although they respond to complaints quickly, UpdraftPlus seem to cause a great deal of frustration amongst users. It would be nice to see a few more apologies and offers of assistance.

5. VaultPress

VaultPress by Automattic is only accessible if you purchase the premium Jetpack plugin. So if you don’t like Jetpack or don’t want to spend time getting to know it, then it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

Pros

Some of the plans on offer include a set-and-forget backup, one-click restoration and options for site migration.

If you are a Jetpack premium user, then switch backups on and you’re done. With free Jetpack you can buy this as an add-on.

Only your dashboard and content files will be backed up with this plugin. And not your full WordPress installation.

This isn’t an expensive service but it’s a shame that there’s no free trial version.

This plugin’s tied to JetPack too. So if you don’t like this piece of bloatware but you like VaultPress, you have a hard choice to make.

Our Suggested WordPress Backup Solutions

Treat your WordPress site like your home’s front door – and keep it locked. Moreover, add to your safety with a reliable backup solution, like the above 5 offerings. Choosing the right one can be tough. So, here are our recommendations:

UpdraftPlus – This is a must-have plugin if you run a WordPress development business. Functionality, flexibility, and affordability mean that it ticks all the most important boxes. Developers are treated to some great features that give them extensive control over backups once clients have control of their sites.

BackWPup – If you’re taking care of smaller client websites and looking for something that doesn’t cost much money and is easy to use too, this does the job. Its ease-of-use means you shouldn’t encounter many problems, but if any should prove unavoidable then it’s good to know that you can count on a quick response from the developer.

Plesk Onyx Hosting Platform – The easiest way to do avoid the headache of choosing a WordPress backup plugin is to switch to this all-inclusive platform, backup included. You’ll enjoy the full might of the WordPress Toolkit – a single management interface that lets you simplify all management routines. Clone a WordPress site, including all website files, database and settings, without the need for any third-party plugins.

There’s a sliding scale of fates that could befall your site, from lost functionality in one area to wholesale destruction and data loss. Whatever happens, it’s up to you to get your site back online as fast as you can. You can wait for your hosting company to sort things out, wade through mountains of advice from the WordPress community. But your best option is to prevent rather than cure.